British society

“ So—in every civilisation, in every century, have passed the lives of the multitude of mankind. Yet it is change—obscure change in economic conditions, in aspirations, in faiths, in energies or lassitudes—which is responsible for the rise and fall of nations, for the variegated panorama of an ever-changing [8] world. We have enjoyed in England security and settled society since the period of the great Civil War. ”

“ How many thousands are there in England so circumstanced, who curse the artificial state of society in which they are compelled to live! In their profession or trade they are bound to keep up a certain degree of appearance, or they are shunned by those whom it is their chief interest to conciliate. ”

“ But when our fathers abjured the name of Britons, and 'assumed among the nations of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them,' they tacitly contracted the engagement for themselves, and above all for their posterity, to contribute, in their corporate and national capacity, their full share, ay, and more than their full share, of the virtues that elevate and of the graces that adorn the character of civilized man. They announced themselves as reformers of the institution of civil society. ”

“ It is to identify them with us—it is to make them part of the same Community, by giving them a full share of those accumulated blessings which are diffused throughout Great Britain; it is, in a word, by giving them a full participation of the Wealth, the Power, and the Stability, of the British Empire. ”

“ And without in the least prejudging the question as to which is the greater country, it is solely on these grounds that I consider our history more important than theirs: and I select for especial study the progress of English civilization, simply because, being less affected by agencies not arising from itself, we can the more clearly discern in it the normal march of society, and the undisturbed operation of those great laws by which the fortunes of mankind are ultimately regulated. ”

“ In England we are too apt to designate, by the general term “society,” the particular class, clan, or clique in which we ourselves may happen to move, and if that little speck be sufficiently polished, people are generally quite satisfied with what they term “the present state of society;” ”

“ The flower of all classes of society: the poor and the rich; workmen and students, the élite of the trade unions and of the churches, brilliant scholars of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, of London and Manchester; men of the bench and of the bar, of the shop and of the factory; and they come freely and without conscription, from the simple compulsion of duty to their country and to humanity and to the Kingdom of God. ”

“ That matter has been reported on, preached on, spoken on, till all other civilized countries reproach Britain with the unique contrast between the exceeding wealth of some classes and the exceeding poverty of others; till we, instead of being startled by the reproach, take the present state of things as a matter of course, a physical necessity, a law of nature and society, that there should be, in the back streets of every great city, hordes of, must I say, savages? ”

“ That the general tone of the British community is higher and purer proceeds from the influential preponderance of the middle class; and the court, and in general the aristocracy, conform to the march of civilisation. ”

“ New ideas falling upon a people who have cause for discontent may bring forth fruit a hundredfold. England, at the end of the eighteenth century, was a society in a state of rapid economic change, which produced a disposition in the mass of the community to alter institutions adapted for more stable conditions. From America and from France came the preaching of the right of the individual to control his own life, which precisely suited the case of those whom swift alterations of the economic structure exposed to injury. ”

“ How can you most easily and most securely better yourselves as Britishers—as working men? By making England better, by making it better worth your while to be a citizen of, and a worker in that nation! ”

“ Now we apprehend, not without some means of observation and inquiry, that the state and features of society in Great Britain and in all our Northern regions are almost identically the same, or run in parallelisms, by which we might match every phenomenon, incident, prejudice, and folly, every good and every bad trait and manifestation in the one place with something exactly like it in the other. ”

“ Yet, of late, much has been done, though much still remains to do, in the way of a truly scientific study of the development of institutions, political, ecclesiastical, industrial, and so forth, of this and other countries. As this tendency grows, we may hope gradually to have a genuine history of the English people; an account—not of the virtues and vices of Mary Queen of Scots, or arguments as to the propriety of cutting off Charles I.'s head—but a trustworthy account of the way in which the actual structure of modern society has been developed out of its simpler germs. ”

“ In treating of all matters, where the paramount interest of society, Humanity, or all sensitive Nature is concerned, the government of England, founded upon these principles, is the most exquisite workmanship of human reason, above all others adapted to approximate the beacon of speculative truth, with a practice suitable to the present state of policy and morality, tending to augment the volition in the ratio of the increase of judgment, the only secure process to moral and social perfection. ”

“ Since my return to England I have frequently been asked the question, "What is society like in America?” This word society is one of very ambiguous meaning. It is used in England by the titled aristocracy to distinguish themselves, their connexions, and those whose wealth or genius has gained the admission into their circles. ”

“ I have here enlarged on the Steps necessary to be taken for educating three Classes of People, and now proceed to treat of the fourth; which comprehends a very large Part of the Kingdom, but London particularly; viz. all the inferior Trades, and many others, that, according to the Custom of associating together, we may consider as forming one Division. Men, very valuable in their Way, and of boundless Use to Society: tho’ by the Wisdom of Providence born rather to Labour than to Idleness; to be obedient to the Laws, than to be the Dispensers of them. ”

“ The class of society, in a country, with which simple and proud genius finds itself most at home, is its superior and true nobility; and, that England’s circles of high rank are so preferred, and so honored and brightened, by spirits like Jane Porter, is, we think, the evidence that proves most for England’s present civilization and glory. ”

“ Society becomes more dignified, man more ennobled. It is to this power that kings, emperors, and lords owe their positions; for one word from that class will bring the loftiest head to the block, if by word or action the attempt should be made to lessen or destroy that power which elevated him or them to eminence.
The commercial power of England is its rule, and to it that nation owes all its present greatness. The politics of England is its disgrace; its commerce, its honor. The king and Parliament are at the head of the one,—the hewers of wood and drawers of water at that of the other. ”

“ Human society has many forms, and all may be good, but each must be specially protected by its own public morality. England was reared into greatness and flourished in greatness for twenty hundred years on one unvarying order. ”

“ By institutions I refer to the societies which were formed all over the United Kingdom chiefly for the benefit of the better-class working men and women, and the popularity of which is on the wane, owing to the prevalence of free libraries, penny readings, and amateur concerts. ”

“ Though of course, as society here is not so regulated as in Great Britain, seeing that a couple of centuries can never do for any country what ten centuries can do, the people are perfectly civilized, I can assure you--quite tame, upon my word. ”

“ During the past fifteen years, sharp observers of society in the English Capital have been appalled by the visible and marked progress of moral and social deterioration among the people who affect to give tone, and breeding, and refinement, to all that they do or say, as leaders of society. ”

“ Thus British institutions—the institutions of national self-government, which are peculiarly British in origin—have played a main part both in determining the character of the British Empire and in bringing about its wonderful expansion. The more the British Empire has grown the more freedom has been established on the face of the earth. ”

“ Too long had British life been corrupted by the fictions of loyalty to an uninspiring and alien Court, of national piety in an official Church, of freedom in a politician-rigged State, of justice in an economic system where the advertiser, the sweater and usurer had a hundred advantages over the producer and artisan, to maintain itself now steadily at any high pitch of heroic endeavour. ”

“ But we now began to learn that the people of England, particularly the Society of Friends, were taking a warm interest in their welfare, stimulating their minds in favour of industry, economy, and Christianity, and especially guarding them against the pernicious effects of ardent spirits. ”

“ He had there seen that the character may exists apart from riches, from lineage, or from social rank, from learning or from talent, without one or other of whicli it is rarely seen in other societies. He had observed, too, that it is the large proportion of gentlemen in English society, Most marked characteristic of English society. and among those who bear rule among the people, which renders possible that combination of individual liberty with subordination to law which is the most marked characteristic of English society. ”

“ To watch over the interests of those great offshoots of the British race which plant themselves in distant lands; to aid them in their efforts to extend the domain of civilisation, and to fulfil that first behest of a benevolent Creator to His intelligent creatures—'subdue the earth;' to abet the generous endeavour to impart to these rising communities the full advantages of British laws, British institutions, and British freedom ”

“ I have not sought to persuade him that Great Britain is a charitable institution. What nation is, or could be, given the nature of man? Her good treatment of us has been to her own interest. She is wise, farseeing, less of an opportunist in her statesmanship than any other nation. She has seen clearly and ever more clearly that our good will was to her advantage. And beneath her wisdom, at the bottom of all, is her sense of our kinship through liberty defined and assured by law. ”

“ England may perhaps compare very favourably with most other countries, if you draw the line in society tolerably high - if you compare the condition of the rich and the upper classes of this country, or a considerable portion of the middle classes, with the same classes abroad. ”

“ An analysis of the moral forces which produce the earnest faces and rapid steps of these rank and file and officers of commerce will reveal the true elements of British greatness, rather than any laboratory dissection of our coal or ironstone. ”

“ These are hard charges to bring against the cream of a nation which for centuries has held its own by its energy, abundance of resource, strength of character, and scorn of effeminacy; but it is impossible to deny that these characteristics of the British race have been much less strongly marked of late years. ”

“ Taking a general but not a superficial survey of the English character since the Reformation, a thousand circumstances convince me that the salient point in our national psychology is the passion for accumulating wealth, of which industry is the chief instrument. We value our freedom principally because it leaves us unrestricted in our pursuits; and that reverence for law and for all that is established, which also eminently distinguishes the English nation, is occasioned by the conviction that, next to liberty, order is the most efficacious assistant of industry. ”

“ What we might regret is that Britain, which we know and are proud of, the Britain of great achievements in politics and literature, of free thought and self-respecting obedience, of a thousand years of high endeavor and constant progress, was indeed to perish when these factories and furnaces whirled and blazed their last. ”

“ Free society is a recent and small experiment. The English Poor Laws and the English poor, constitute its only history; for only in England has the experiment been made on a large scale for several centuries. If we have not proved its total and disastrous failure in England, in our Sociology, and in this chapter, we are resolved to prove it before we have done. ”

“ But the calm, sound, and most British Briton shrinks from public life, as charlatanism, and respects an economy founded on agriculture, coal-mines, manufactures, or trade, which secures an independence through the creation of real values. ”

“ It is easy to understand that common judgment of foreigners regarding the English people. Go about in England as a stranger, travel by rail, live at hotels, see nothing but the broadly public aspect of things, and the impression left upon you will be one of hard egoism, of gruffness and sullenness; in a word, of everything that contrasts most strongly with the ideal of social and civic life. And yet, as a matter of fact, no nation possesses in so high a degree the social and civic virtues. ”

“ England first went through the political revolution for the establishment of representative government, the theoretical revolution against scholasticism, and the industrial revolution against landed property ”

“ The English enterprise found its vigorous life and animating spirit in working towards democracy, civil liberty, and soul-freedom. The French came here as soldiers, priests, and free-traders, with the range of the woods for their goods, and the natives as hunters in their service. But they wholly lacked that sturdy class — the bone and sinew of a community planting itself for new empire on virgin soil — of patient toilers on a reclaimed farm, with rights of severalty for homesteads; individuals in their efforts and success, but members of a commonwealth for mutual help and security. ”